“Ambassador” on The Daily Caller

UC Irvine officials have recommended the suspension of the university’s Muslim student group whose members disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador earlier this year, heightening a debate about free speech that has roiled the campus. (more)

While you’re watching Team USA soundly whomp England (hopefully) on day 2 of the World Cup tomorrow, ponder this: could soccer, the obsession of every country in the world other than the slightly backwards and somewhat confused USA, possibly be a bad thing? (more)

Congress is postponing huge issues until after the elections and there’s a danger in that. (more)

Two years after getting her heart broken by her husband’s relationship with her best friend, Shania Twain is legally single again – which is not to say she’s back on the market. (more)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected international criticism of a deadly raid against a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza earlier this week, saying the blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. (more)

Israel said it would deport 682 activists from more than 35 countries detained after the assault in international waters on Monday on six aid ships bound for Gaza, where Hamas Islamists opposed to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hold sway. (more)

It appears that the certification of election results in Iraq is looming. Barring any additional roadblocks, the vote will be qualified in the coming days. Nearly three months after the Iraqi people went to the polls, is there light at the end of the tunnel? To hear Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, you’d think that everything is fine and dandy. Mr. Maliki acknowledged to the Washington Post that “violence exists, but not because the government has not been formed.” Oh really? How much longer do the people of Iraq have to wait? (more)

VACAVILLE, CA – Two men were arrested in Vacaville late Thursday after police reportedly found more than 200 marijuana plants inside their vehicle. (more)

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington, D.C., this week, and his meeting with President Obama showcased the administration’s new charm offensive aimed at keeping the Afghani leader as an ally. This about-face in diplomacy puts the spotlight on just how badly the administration stumbled with its negative Afghanistan rhetoric earlier this year. (more)

Despite the fact that “the United Nations, the U.S. Embassy, and the Arab League as well as Iraqi election officials have all declared the election free of systematic fraud,” as the Associated Press points out, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hell-bent to make sure he remains the leader of Iraq.   Two months after the March 7^th elections, voters are showing signs of frustration.  “The manual recount just delays the political process and it will destabilize the security situation,” one resident told the AP. (more)

Under better circumstances, the joke about a Jewish merchant and an angry Taliban militant told last week at a Washington think-tank by National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones might have pass as a failed, mildly offensive attempt at humor, and nothing more. The stereotypes are objectionable and the punch line not clever. But that joke told at a moment of heightened tension and mutual suspicion in the delicate relationship between the governments of Israel and the U.S., runs the risk of reinforcing all the wrong elements of the troubled relationship. (more)

The priestly sex abuse scandals have established a need for the Catholic Church to thoroughly reform itself from within in order to stop the bleeding and regain the confidence of millions of Catholics worldwide whose faith has been shaken by it. The reforms must be real, concrete and pastoral rather than ones that come across as superficial and insincere. (more)

The British ambassador in Yemen narrowly escaped a homicide attack Monday, when a young man in a school uniform detonated his explosives belt near his armored car at a poor neighborhood of San’a, officials said. (more)

“Every day we don’t act…” How those impassioned those words are. How commanding. The very essence of presidential, moral leadership. Unsurprisingly, such eloquence escaped President Obama’s lips during the weekly address—and for a blink, I had “Hope.” Hope that he would switch from the sexy topic of financial regulation to matters more pressing on the presidential portfolio. Like genocide prevention, crimes against humanity, rigged elections, or just foreign affairs in general. Instead, Obama embraced the domestic politics of the day—and willfully ignored the elections in Sudan. (more)

I wasn’t going to write about President Obama’s new nuclear weapons strategy–a central tenet of which is that the U.S. would not authorize a nuclear strike against a nonnuclear country in retaliation for a chemical or biological attack if that country is in compliance with its nonproliferation obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). (more)

In another serious blow to the Republican National Committee, one of its top fundraisers — and its few remaining connections to the traditional GOP donor base — has resigned a senior, unpaid position. (more)

The developments in Iraq over the past 60 hours have been anything but dull. It’s always amazing what an election can do. The results, announced Friday night, have thrown the country into a state of disarray. It’s true that former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi garnered the most votes in the Parliament but the current Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is pulling out all of the stops to make sure Allawi doesn’t get first digs at forming a government. (more)

The results from the March 7 elections were announced in Baghdad Friday night and what an upset it was.  Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi narrowly beat out current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki taking 91 seats in the Iraqi Parliament.  Maliki’s party won 89 seats.  That’s close and a severe setback for Maliki.  However, the outcome doesn’t necessarily guarantee Allawi his old job back, only allowing him to be the first to try to form a government.  Maliki did win 26 seats in the key Baghdad province, two more than Allawi. (more)

The March 7 national elections have left Iraq divided. Final results are expected today and the political jockeying is in full swing. (more)

Turkey will not send its ambassador back to Washington until the Obama administration and Congress make it clear that they will not judge Turkish history, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday. (more)